Discover Top Posts Tagged with #f.i.n.d.

Photos of »Idioten« after Lars von Trier, directed by Kirill Serebrennikov © Gianmarco Bresadola

#idioten #Serebrennikov #Schaubühne #Russian theatre #f.i.n.d.

When Humour Is Corrosive: A Play That Won’t Change the World

by Joseph Pearson

With the final weekend of the F.I.N.D. festival ahead, I met the director, Marco Layera, of the Chilean La Re-sentida theatre group, to speak about his play »Tratando de hacer una obra que cambie el mundo« (Trying to Create a Play That Will Change the World). The work is about a group of idealistic actors, who go underground to work in splendid isolation. They believe they will create a theatrical masterwork that will change society. The problem is that, when they are cut off from the world, a transformative government comes to power that abolishes social injustice. What role is left then for their play? Layera’s work is a searing critique of political theatre.

Joseph Pearson: Why did you decide to produce a play on this topic?

Marco Layera: I was inspired by the play »The Just Assassins« (Les Justes) by Albert Camus. That play is about a subversive group that plans a terrorist act against a Prince. We started working on it, but as we rehearsed it, we found it was naïve to do the play too literally and historically. We started searching for a way to make the story more contemporary and concrete, in relation to our own times and our generation. So we brought it down to earth, changed it to a group of actors, who are also collaborating and working together almost like a group of terrorists. Instead of making a bomb, we are making a play. To do this, we needed to isolate ourselves from society. This is a metaphor and a critique of art: if we are isolated from society, enclosed in a basement, how can we change reality? We come from a tradition in Chile of socially engaged art and theatre, and here we question that tradition. We ask ourselves – and this is ongoing in the play – whether political theatre is useful. Are we useful? Or is this just for a group of snobs: the audience who comes and claps.

Why do you choose to approach the subject through comedy?

Because we are from a theatrical tradition that is very dense and serious. I think there are other tools that are more corrosive: like humour, sarcasm, absurdity. These tools are much more powerful and corrosive than seriousness or straightforwardness. It is a good thing to laugh, and especially when someone realizes he is laughing about something that he shouldn’t be laughing about. This play is actually the »nicest« play we have. The other plays are more insolent. It’s not a dichotomy to laugh and seriously reflect on something.

What role has political theatre played in Chile, in the years since Pinochet?

During the dictatorship, theatre had a very important role in Chile. It was a space of resistance – everything that was done in the theatre was done against the dictatorship. What happened with the return of democracy is that the enemy became more ambiguous. It doesn’t have the name: »Pinochet«. There is a huge sense of emptiness. The new generations realize that the left-wing political group that recuperated democracy is now officialised. They turned their backs on everything we were taught, what we were supposed to do. They only administrated the leftovers of Pinochet. There is lots of disappointment with those people who made this pact with democracy who said a lot of things but when they came to power they did nothing. Now, theatre in Chile is able to critique that generation which overthrew the dictatorship and assumed power. Because the time for thinking about and recuperating democracy is past. Now we have to demand a real and true democracy that does not exist. The government that assumed power after the dictatorship was untouchable because they had done a good thing. Now, it’s been more than 20 years, so we can demand what they haven’t fulfilled. We are considered a very disappointed generation.

In what ways does your theatre engage with the disappointment?

The play is pessimistic. It starts with a premise, that we are part of the generation that hasn’t had a lot happen to it. Our rights are pretty much safe, we are not in a lot of danger, we have access to wealth, the internet, drug democracy. Nothing suppresses us too much. So we are a comfortable generation. There’s a line in the play that they left us »orphans, satisfied and living in a country that does not belong to us«. So, yes, there is disappointment and critique in the play. Not only regarding the political generation we are talking about, but also regarding the arts. We self-critique: what are we doing? It is very easy to talk about human misery and bad conditions in Berlin drinking champagne after the performance. I feel I am a coward. We are all cowards. If we were truly brave, we would be at the front-line fighting. Instead, we are here on a stage made of cardboard, where the bullets are fake. So today, to do art is almost to turn one’s back on the world’s problems. I recognize myself as very bourgeois. I don’t have the strength of my convictions, to fight on the street, or go to the south of Chile to fight for the native people, or to work in a local school. That would be more effective than what we are doing here.

If you are disappointed with what theatre can do, why is the audience there?

First, I am not anti-social. Or else I wouldn’t do theatre. What I am is disappointed about theatre. But it is the only thing I know how to do, medium-well. And I love what I do. That doesn’t mean that I am not conscious that what I do is not very useful, and doesn’t change the world. What I do think is that theatre has a power on self-reflection, and a subversive power that can be recuperated. The effect of theatre is very narrow, but I think we can broaden it. But maybe I am demanding too much from theatre.

If theatre cannot change the world, what can it do to be less narrow?

I believe that theatre is a space where you can transfigure and question reality, to construct and pose new questions, and those are questions that are not asked elsewhere. Planting that seed is interesting. I believe very much in the tool of active provocation, and to defend what someone does not think. So people do not agree with what I am saying. This generates a motor, something that is more interesting than having others agree with you. In that sense, it would be interesting to produce a show that questions the democratic system, knowing that the democratic system has been the best friend of neo-liberalism. These are interesting questions that can be posed in theatre. Because if you question democracy, you are a fascist. Just not when you do it in the theatre.

Dr. Joseph Pearson is a Canadian writer, historian and local expert on Berlin. He lectures at New York University Berlin and is the editor of the blog, The Needle: www.needleberlin.com. For professional inquiries please contact: [email protected] or [email protected].

#tratando #Schaubühne #f.i.n.d.#chilean theatre

Photos of »Derretiré con un cerillo la nieve de un volcán« © Gianmarco Bresadola

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F.I.N.D. Day 1,2,3 © Gianmarco Bresadola

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Photos »This Grave is too small for me« © Gianmarco Bresadola

#this grave is too small for me #schaubuehne #Schaubühne #f.i.n.d.

Photos MEAT © Gianmarco Bresadola

#meat #schaubuehne #Schaubühne #f.i.n.d.

How to Melt an Ice Cap with a Match Mexico’s Incendiary Politics on Stage

by Joseph Pearson

It started when the directors, Luisa Pardo and Gabino Rodríguez, discovered an obscure political tract. »La revolucíon institucional« (1998) is an analysis of Mexico’s historic ruling party, the PRI, written by Natalia Valdez Tejeda, a woman from the conservative province of Michoacán. Shortly after its publication, Natalia disappeared. She has been missing for fourteen years.

»We found the book in a library in Xalapa, Veracruz. It is not an edited volume produced by a commercial publishing house. It is handmade and very small. We found it and then we started our research. It’s absolutely unknown«, says Gabino. Luisa adds, »That’s why we decided to re-edit the book.« The couple has since produced 3000 copies, adding dates and images.

I ask them whether the book has anything to do with Natalia’s disappearance, and Luisa replies: »Her family does not want to talk about this … it is not clear why she disappeared. On stage, we try to leave that in doubt. Natalia was a problematic person. I can understand her because Mexico is a very macho country. It is not easy for women to be critical and to act freely, at least in the working classes. Natalia was very critical inside her family and in the places where she worked. That’s why the disappearance is not clear, because she was problematic in many different places.«

The re-enactment of Natalia’s story on-stage personalizes a greater struggle – the story of Mexico’s PRI, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, a national State-unity institution with liberal tendencies. If you want to understand Mexican politics, then, you must understand the PRI and its journey through the twentieth century to today. Founded in 1929, and born of the Mexican Revolution, the PRI ruled Mexican history until its historic Presidential electoral defeat in 2000 by Vicente Fox, leading the conservative Christian PAN party (National Action Party). The PAN then ruled until its defeat in 2012, bringing the PRI back to power under the helm of President Enrique Peña Nieto. The PAN’s defeat followed a period of disappointment with rising violence accompanying Mexico’s war on drugs. The PRI, say Luisa and Gabino, provided a concept of political unity for Mexico’s diverse electorate that the other parties lacked.

The title of Luisa and Gabino’s play, »Derretiré con un cerillo la nieve de un volcán/I Melt the Snow of a Volcano with a Match« is a quote from Jorge Meixuerio, a PRI politician from Oaxaca, who penned it immediately before his 1943 electoral defeat and suicide. His death, he argued, was »mi último argumento«/»his last argument« against his political opponent whom he accused of fraud. He claimed that his chances of reversing the electoral decision were no greater than trying to melt an ice cap with a match. The title is playful, the circumstances tragic, and the historical parallel a complex meditation on the PRI’s recent return to leadership.

How then do the directors feel about the PRI’s contemporary politics? Gabino says, »The PRI’s outward image – because we don’t have a military dictatorship in Mexico like in many other Latin American countries – is one of harboring dissidents from other places. But within Mexico, the PRI is killing in the same way that the military does. The PRI always has two faces: on one hand the PRI is very paternalistic, invests a lot in culture – during the 20th Century they invested more than any other country in Latin America – but on the other hand, they do not give the people the freedom to say what they want in the country. There is always the smiling face, and the other face.«

The return of the PRI, and the positions of the other parties, is a source of disappointment for the directors, and this play reflects on that disappointment. Yet, at the same time they are encouraged by one aspect of the 2012 electoral reversal.

»The Yo Soy 132 student movement politicised many young people who were not into politics before. Now the movement is over, but it changed the perspective of how young people think politically. The good result of the election … was this movement that maybe can start changing things. Not as a movement, but as a changing of individual perspectives of how to deal with politics«, says Gabino.

The goal of the directors is to represent the history of the PRI and to reconstruct its history, on stage, also through the individuated perspective of Natalia’s story. Their role too, says Gabino, is to educate, and to educate themselves. From their critical hypothesis about the evils of the PRI, they have come to a more nuanced position.

»We are trying to do more of a reconstruction of the history than to judge it«, says Luisa. »At the beginning of our research, we were only thinking that the PRI is bad … But we recognize that the PRI developed a free education system, the health care system. You have big museums of archaeology and Mexican ethnicities. Travelling and comparing in Latin America, we realize that it’s true. The PRI is not only the bad things. Maybe this is what we are trying to do: to recognize the complexity of the party, because the PRI is the biggest institution of politics in Mexico. It is the school of politics. The PRI is at all levels of society: farmers, unions. Everything is related to the PRI.«

»I think that we have been raised in a society that likes to think of politics like football«, adds Gabino, »This is my team. But let’s try to think about what is really happening. We are trying to think about politics, not to be loyal to one party or the other.«

The current production of »Derretiré con un cerillo la nieve de un volcán«, which will premiere at the Schaubühne in the FIND festival on 8 April, is a heavy rewriting of a version performed in 2013 in Madrid and Brussels, and 30+ university performances in Mexico City and elsewhere in Mexico (»We thought the play was too ambiguous« says Luisa. »We are much happier now«, adds Gabino). They bring it to the stage with their company, Lagartijas tiradas al sol (Lizards lying in the sun).

I ask about how they work together and with their troop, and Luisa admits that, »we have a lot of differences. And we fight a lot. But this is something that is important to us. When we started to work together, we thought that the idea of one director, one writer, one big image of power in the theatre, which is vertical, is not a good idea. It is not a good way to live and to work. We prefer to argue and to discuss and to create some kind of democracy inside the company, some collective thinking. We think the difference between the ideas could result in a more complex process.« They strike me as exactly the kind of people who should be speaking out critically against the top-down politics that the PRI represents. But why should this be done on the stage?

Luisa replies, »Theatre is a way to understand life in a lot of ways because you need your body, your emotions, your intelligence. You need to work together with many people. That is why I keep working in theatre.« Gabino adds, »The idea is that we need to produce reality. Nobody, or few people, like reality for what it is. It is good to produce reality and use reality. It is not about how we produce fictions, but how we produce realities and live inside those realities we produce.«

#derretiré #mexican theatre #schaubuehne #Schaubühne #f.i.n.d.

The »Black Paintings« of Rodrigo García

by Joseph Pearson

Rodrigo García’s name blazed across the international press in late 2011 with his production »Golgotha Picnic«. You assume correctly if you think a theatre piece with this title didn’t meet with the Catholic Church’s approval. You all know Mr. Wilde’s famous utterance: »There’s only one thing worse than being talked about, and that’s not being talked about at all.« With »Golgotha Picnic«, García’s reputation as a blaspheming agent provocateur of the international theatre scene was well established. A French bishop, amidst protests in Toulouse before the Gallic premiere, criticised García’s depiction (to quote the BBC) of Christ as a »madman, dog, pyromaniac, messiah of AIDS, devil-whore, no better than a terrorist.« The production of extreme theatre arrived in Berlin the following year, for the 2012 Foreign Affairs Festival.

Now the Spanish-Argentinean (born in the slums of Buenos Aires province in 1964) is back in the German capital with a new play he wrote, and directs, called »Daisy« (the appellation of a prominent animal in the production). There’s a delirious aspect to this work: frenetic dances with pets and machines, an asphyxiation by motorcycle fumes, representations of Christ grinding his pelvis, masses of cockroaches. I should not forget the appearance of the philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), remembered not only for his contributions to a dizzying number of fields, from mathematics to ethics, but of course also for his remarkable optimism.

Optimism is not one of »Daisy’s« obvious qualities. It is a piece about our fragility and our loneliness. Not just a simple malaise about humanity, but a primal scream in god’s absence. It will be no surprise that Rodrigo García is strongly influenced by Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, and the soulful black period paintings of Francisco Goya. For there is poetry here, when hooded figures huddle to the aching strains of a late Beethoven String Quartet.

García says in an interview, »The theme that runs through the whole piece is loneliness.« It is a loneliness accompanied by »pets, cockroaches, snails and especially words«. The animals are everywhere in this production, it’s a veritable bestiary. For García: they are »full of mystery: snails with their slowness, the bunker they carry on their backs. Turtles who remember the beginning of the universe. Cockroaches which are almost indestructible, which have survived every disaster.«

The focus on animals, their detachment, and our relationship and affinity to them in an often cruel and indifferent world provides a philosophical perspective when we pursue the other matter at the heart of »Daisy«, which is its critique of internet technologies.

»Just how evil are they?« you might ask García. And he replies, »Facebook is a social network that encourages outrageously anti-social behaviour, a false, calming sedative to help one endure loneliness. But instead of alleviating loneliness, it heightens it.«

So here too, the vanity of our struggle against our own solitude is illustrated by the indifference of internet applications, by Google which is nonetheless ever-present. Our language is meanwhile impoverished by emoticons.

And yet, still, somewhere in the background, you can hear the slow movement of the Beethoven Op. 132, the »Heiliger Dankgesang« – in a play that questions whether this thanksgiving is at all sufficient.

#Daisy #Rodrigo García #schaubuehne #Schaubühne #f.i.n.d.